Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore

Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore (8 August 1605-30 November 1675) was the proprietor of the Province of Maryland from 1632 to 1675. A Catholic, he promoted religious tolerance in his colony, and the city of Baltimore was named for him; Anne Arundel County was named for his wife, Anne Arundel.

Biography
Cecil Calvert was born in Kent, England in 1605, the son of George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore. He was baptized an Anglican, but he followed his father in converting to Catholicism in 1625. In 1628, he accompanied his family to the colony of Newfoundland, but the colony failed due to disease and attacks by the French. In 1632, King Charles I of England granted Calvert a charter to colonize a portion of North America called "Maryland" after his wife Henrietta Maria of France; Calvert's father had previously sought to establish the colony. When Calvert's father died, he became Lord Baltimore.

Baltimore and the settlers arrived in Maryland aboard the Ark and the Dove, and, in 1649, Baltimore had a Toleration Act passed, mandating religious tolerance for trinitarian Christians. During the English Civil War, Lord Baltimore sided with the Cavaliers against the Puritan settlers in the Thirteen Colonies, who tended to support the Parliamentarians. From the Puritan victory at the Battle of the Severn in 1655 to 1658, the Puritan assembly retained powers in Maryland, but the proprietorship was restored to Lord Baltimore in 1658. He went on to return to England, and he died in Middlesex in 1675.